The Footprints of the Jesuits

by Richard W. Thompson

Sympathizing with Ferdinand IV of Naples—the most bigoted monarch in Europe, at whose instance they were restored—the Jesuits selected such points of operation as would enable them to strike their hardest blows at the freedom of speech, of the press, and of religious belief; well knowing that where these were allowed, they gave birth to the principle of popular self-government where it did not exist, and strengthened and maintained it where it did. They were encouraged by all who supported the alliance between the papacy and the allied sovereigns, upon the ground that the parties to that alliance were endeavoring to keep Church and State united, as the only certain guarantee for preserving monarchism. They were consequently accepted as co-workers in the cause of absolute imperialism and the enemies of every form of government where the people possess the right of sovereignty. The flag under which they marched had upon it all the symbols of despotism, and no room for a single star to indicate the light of modern progress and development. Having thus reached again a condition of apparent security, they were attracted to Rome by the patronage of the papacy, and the value of their alliance was recognized by the papal authorities, as may be seen in the fact that they had restored to them their property which Clement XIV had confiscated, together with the Roman and German colleges at Rome, and a number of churches. They became more powerful than ever in the States of the Church, and succeeded in bringing all Italy under the dictatorship of their general, except Sardinia and Piedmont, where, in order to avoid a direct breach with the pope, they were tolerated, but not installed. They moved about through Europe, openly where they could do so safely, and secretly where they could not—rejoicing when they witnessed the triumph of monarchism over the rights of the people. Wheresoever a battle was to be fought against these rights, they always aided and encouraged the cause of political despotism. If, in the contests of that period, a single Jesuit could have been found in the ranks of the people, except to betray them, he would have been anathematized by his society.

The reintroduction of the Jesuits into Spain teaches a lesson which should not be forgotten. The king, Ferdinand VII, proved himself to be one of the most faithful of their royal pupils. After he had succeeded in becoming freed from the grasp of Napoleon, and returned to his kingdom, he found an existing constitution by which the Spanish people, in his absence, had placed wholesome limitations upon the royal power. With a view to regain possession of authority, he made a solemn pledge that he would obey this constitution and see that it was enforced. Having succeeded, he proved by his subsequent conduct that he was thoroughly conversant with, and wholly approved, the Jesuit doctrine that a monarch is not bound by any promise made to his subjects, or by any oath to obey it, because his authority is divine, and the people possess no rights which he does not of his own accord concede to them. Consequently, when safely in possession of the throne—with Jesuit emissaries crowding about his court to dictate his policy and pardon his perjury—he traitorously proceeded to abolish the Cortes, the legislative body of the nation, and grasp the scepter of absolute government in his own hands. He restored the infamous Inquisition, and the cruelty of his despotism was exhibited in the number of victims who suffered death during his reign of terror. How such a monarch should have enjoyed the favor and protection of Pius VII—the head of the Church—almost passes intelligent comprehension; how he had the approval of the Jesuits is well understood. His enormities became so great, at last, that the Roman Catholic people of Spain, weary of his persecutions, and realizing that the nation could not live unless they were arrested, resorted to revolution to avenge wrongs they could endure no longer, and proclaimed a constitutional form of government, whereby they guaranteed such popular rights as they deemed essential to their own welfare. But the Jesuits were present to counsel the perjured king, and, accepting their casuistical teachings as his guide, he assented to this new constitution, and by the repetition of his solemn promise to observe it, turned away the popular vengeance. Thus he gained time to renew his royal strength, and when he subsequently found the nation seemingly slumbering in a sense of security, again stamped his feet upon the constitution, reassumed his arbitrary authority as king by divine right, independently of the people, forfeited his honor by repeating his perjury, and plunged Spain into the deepest misery. This perjured tyrant was cursed by the Roman Catholic people of Spain, and his enormities drove the Roman Catholic populations of Spanish America to assert their independence. When he had the royal power in his hands he brought the Inquisition and the Jesuits back to Spain; when the people were enabled to enforce the constitution, they drove the Jesuits out of the country. He knew his friends, and the people knew their enemies. But with all the infamies of his conduct resting upon him, he was favored and applauded by Pius VII and venerated by the Jesuits. The contemporaneous events are full of instruction.

To accomplish the objects announced at Vienna, the "Holy Alliance" met again in Congress at Verona, where the sovereigns pledged themselves, in the most solemn form, that they would continue to prevent the establishment of popular governments, and would unite all their energies in preserving monarchical institutions where they existed, and in re-establishing them where they had been set aside by the people.[161] The adoption of a constitution by Spain was considered as in conflict with this decision at Verona, and preparations were at once made to defeat it. Louis XVIII, of France, as one of the allied sovereigns who had undertaken to preserve monarchism and defeat all popular Governments at every hazard, marched an army into Spain for the sole purpose of subduing the people and setting the constitution aside, so that the state of things that had so long existed under Ferdinand VII should continue. It was this unnatural and unjust war that carried back the Inquisition and the Jesuits to Spain. Nothing could have been more grateful to the Jesuits, because they thought they could see in it the triumph of monarchism over the people. They followed this army of invasion with as much delight as famishing people go to a feast. That they exulted when it succeeded in overthrowing the constitution, and when they saw the feet of the perfidious Ferdinand VII again upon the necks of the Spanish people, no reader of history will doubt. They "nestled themselves in the country," says Greisinger, "more firmly than ever," seemingly encouraged by the hope that the cause of popular rights was lost forever among the Roman Catholic population of Spain. But this unrighteous triumph was short-lived. Another crisis in the affairs of Spain occurred upon the death of Ferdinand VII, when, after a bloody civil war of six or seven years, the ill-fated Isabella was placed upon the throne, and another liberal constitution was proclaimed—not entirely republican, it is true, but sufficiently representative in form to arrest the usurpations of absolutism and assure the ultimate triumph of popular liberty. Once more the Roman Catholic people of Spain signalized their victory over absolutism by driving the Jesuits out of the country, and avowing their determination that they would no longer be endangered by their presence or annoyed by their intrigues. And thus the Jesuits were compelled to find congenial fields of operations elsewhere in Europe, among those who regarded a constitutional and representative form of government as an offense against the divine law, the people as fit only for servitude, and absolute monarchs as "booted and spurred to ride them."

Those familiar with the hatred the Spanish people entertained for the Jesuits—not only on account of their bad influences over Ferdinand VII, but because of the tendency of their doctrines to convert men into machines and blunt their moral sensibilities—are not surprised at the detestation in which they were held in Germany. The Spanish people had long been known for obedience to the Roman Church, but had reached a point of intelligence which enabled them to understand the difference between the Church and the papacy, and, therefore, they would not permit even Pius VII to force the Jesuits upon them—a fact of great significance in forming a true estimate of their character. In Germany, however, where the Reformation began, the remembrance of their former vicious career had not died out, the opposition to them after their re-establishment was more intense than it had been before their suppression; for as the German people increased in enlightenment they were better able to see and understand the irreconcilable hostility of the Jesuits to intellectual development and constitutional government. Their own experience had taught them that reconciliation and concord between Protestants and Roman Catholics were not only possible, but desirable; and they had learned, from that same experience, that, as the Jesuits had participated in all the measures designed to strike down constitutional governments established by Roman Catholic populations, their delight would be increased if, with the same weapons, they could destroy similar governments established by Protestants. Therefore, the German people built around themselves a wall of defense in their own intellectual enlightenment, which Jesuit craft and ingenuity has in vain endeavored to undermine.

France, Austria, and Bavaria were all Roman Catholic countries. France had not forgotten the former fierce and protracted conflict which had given the Gallican Christians their cherished liberties, by assuring to the Government the control of its temporal affairs without papal interference. The recollection of this revived also the remembrance of the fact that the Jesuits had been expelled because of their efforts to destroy these liberties. And, hence, after their re-establishment, even Louis XVIII, with his evident partiality for them as the untiring defenders of absolute monarchism, was unable, although backed by Pius VII, to allow them again openly to re-enter France. Neither in Austria nor Bavaria had there ever been any such struggle as in France; but, nevertheless, the indignation felt towards the Jesuits by the people of both these countries was so undisguised that neither Francis I in the former, nor Maximilian Joseph in the latter, dared to brave public opinion by allowing them free access to either kingdom. These impediments, however, only offered to the Jesuits the opportunity to practice the arts of dissimulation and deception with which they are made familiar by their method of educational training. They surreptitiously entered France under the name of "Pères de la Foi," or "Fathers of the True Faith," and Austria and Bavaria under that of "Redemptionists."[162] They did not venture, in either of these countries, to avow themselves openly as Jesuits, because of the almost universal indignation felt towards them by these Roman Catholic populations. But gaining admission among them by these false pretenses, they understood well, by skillful training, how to proceed. Having penetrated the skirmish-line of the enemy, they could survey the whole field of battle, and plan accordingly. Every Jesuit who stealthily crept into France or Austria or Bavaria, under these masks of hypocrisy, stood towards the people of these countries as the Italian bandit does to his unsuspecting victim,—ready to strike home his stiletto in the dark. It should excite no wonder, therefore, that, with Pius VII and the allied sovereigns upon their side—all maintaining the divine right to govern, and denying that of the people—these incendiary Jesuits were enabled, at last, to avow openly the name and existence of their order, and to become scattered in all directions, under the shelter of papal and imperial protection. Thus supported, they extended themselves over the adjacent States, even as far as Rhenish Prussia, opened their colleges and schools, and permitted but little time to elapse before they assumed their former dictatorship over Governments and peoples. Since then they have again revived their old imperial airs among all the nations, especially where they have found shelter under liberal institutions, and seem to be again inspired by the hope, if not the belief, that their ultimate triumph over Protestantism is assured, and that Roman Catholic populations will bow down before them as the only divinely appointed exponents of the true apostolic faith.

Pius VII was encouraged by the success of the Jesuits, and endeavored first to make them available in France to promote the interests of the papacy. Finding Louis XVIII submissive to his authority, he proposed to him a Concordat with provisions intended to destroy the Gallican liberties, and bring France into the condition struggled after so hard by Boniface VIII; that is, of absolute submission to the papacy in temporal as well as spiritual affairs. Louis XVIII was weak enough to agree to this Concordat, manifestly under Jesuit influence. But the Roman Catholic people of France were not so easily entrapped as the pope and the king had supposed; and the latter soon learned that even his royal authority was not sufficient to enforce this odious measure. He was compelled, therefore, by the force of public sentiment, to abandon it, although France still submitted to the presence of the Jesuits. The failure of the Condordat, however, was a sore defeat; but defeat only incensed the passions of Pius VII.

The hatred of the Jesuits in Germany was shared alike by Protestants and Roman Catholics. These two bodies of Christians agreed that they would unite in maintaining freedom of worship; that is, they would return to the old order of things, which existed before peace and harmony had been disturbed by the Jesuits at their first appearing in Germany. They signed a Concordat to that effect, and sent it to Pius VII for his approval, intending that he should realize how easy it was for Christians to live together in harmony, notwithstanding differences of religious belief prevailed among them. The importance of this movement can not be overestimated. If the pope had thrown his great influence in its favor, its beneficial results would have been universally felt. But Pius VII, seeming not to know that such a union among Christians was possible, positively and peremptorily refused his assent to this just and liberal arrangement, declaring that it would "compromise his temporal and spiritual power." All classes of German Christians—howsoever they otherwise differed—rebuked his illiberality, and adhered to their conciliatory course towards each other. Pius VII, realizing the necessity of fulfilling his obligation to the allied sovereigns, and of keeping the Jesuits in the active service of the papal and imperial cause, became intensely excited at this German persistence, and expressed his indignation in strong language. His course is thus explained by Cormenin: "He rallied around him the kings of the Holy Alliance, declared a terrible war against liberal ideas, fulminated excommunications against the Democrats of France, the Illuminati of Germany, the Radicals of England, and the Carbonari of Italy,"[163] which includes everything that tended, at that period, towards liberalism and popular government. Manifestly, however, his anger was specially aroused at the thought of religious toleration, which, looked at from the papal standpoint, meant the loss of monarchical power and, consequently, heresy.

With this tremendous combination confronting them—composed, as it was, of the papacy, the allied sovereigns, and the Jesuits—what other remedy but revolution was within reach of the people? How else could they prevent the continued union of Church and State, the complete triumph of monarchism, and the crushing defeat of constitutional and popular government? Nobody needs to be told to what extremities the allied sovereigns were ready and willing to go to accomplish these results; and when supported by a pope like Pius VII, and he by the Jesuits, whose society he had re-established for that express purpose, they possessed an organization of such a character, so formidable and vast in its proportions, that there was left to the multitude no other possibility of escape than by asserting, as the people of the United States had done, their natural right to civil and religious liberty. No question about the form of religious faith was involved, except in so far as the pope, the allied sovereigns, and the Jesuits were united in maintaining that the only true religion was that based upon the joint monarchism of Church and State—in other words, that the faculties of the human mind should remain undeveloped in order to fit the people for inferiority and passive obedience to authority.

Hence, when the Roman Catholic populations came to realize what Protestantism had done in a few centuries to enlighten and elevate multitudes of people, it required but little intelligent thought to see that the combination which threatened to deprive them of liberties essential to their welfare was violative of the true faith of the Church they revered, and from whose proper teachings they were unwilling to depart. They could readily understand that it was the papacy, and not the Church, that had led them to the very edge of a fearful precipice. They were animated by the inspiring influence of liberty—always broad, generous, conciliatory. Yielding, therefore, to the instinctive teachings of nature, they found themselves no less desirous than others to enjoy the protection of constitutional government, and no less willing than others to resort to the ultimate remedy of revolution when assured that their just rights could not otherwise be obtained. Thus only are we enabled to account intelligently for the revolutions in the Roman Catholic States—organized, as they were, to resist the tremendous conspiracy of European monarchists, in both Church and State, to defeat the formation of popular constitutional governments, and to overthrow them where they had been formed.